Brothers & Tricksters

Abstract

Brothers & Tricksters Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie (bio) William L. Andrews and William S. McFeely, eds. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written By Himself. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2017. xi + 197 pp. Chronology and bibliography. $16.00. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kevin M. Burke, eds. Twelve Years a Slave. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2017. xx + 410 pp. Chronology and bibliography. $12.50. Karl Jacoby. The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2016. xxviii + 304 pp. Notes, bibliography, illustration credits, and index. $27.95. By the mid-nineteenth century, the United States had become the largest slave empire in the world. Most of its expansion drew from the relocation of slaves from Upper to Lower South states together with enslaved women's reproduction. Some of this growth also derived from illegal kidnapping of free black citizens to meet the insatiable need for slave plantation labor. At the same time, hundreds, often thousands of slaves annually escaped slavery's heartland and headed for northern and western states, as well as across borders to British Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and even Europe. With the abolition of slavery in antebellum northern states and nationally in 1865, people of African descent in the United States faced the challenge of becoming equal citizens in a society with a long history of slavery and racial inequality. In the American South, the hardening of racial categories, the suppression of the black male vote, and the closing of economic opportunities stiffened the challenge of equality in an era of freedom. Some consequences included the temporary popularization of colonization schemes abroad as well as the attainment of individual success across borders. The two autobiographies and one biography under review provide us with some compelling, as well as disturbing, insights into this fascinating nineteenth-century world of slavery, fugitives, kidnapping, racial inequality, and cross-border travel. In 1838, Frederick Douglass successfully escaped two decades of rural and urban bondage in Eastern Maryland. While enslaved, he was worked, punished, [End Page 230] and sold; but he also became literate, learned a trade (caulking), and embraced brotherhood. "I never loved any or confided in any people more than my fellow-slaves" (p. 59). The fugitive Douglass settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, with his new wife Anna Murray, daughter Rosetta (b. 1839) and son Lewis Henry (b. 1840). In 1841, his first major anti-slavery speech at Nantucket was warmly received. Boston abolitionist Wendell Phillips and Liberator editor William Lloyd Garrison encouraged Douglass to write his autobiography to which both men provided written endorsements. There is little information on Douglass's writing method as well as the actual production of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (NLFD). Published in 1845, it consisted of eleven chapters and an appendix. The windowpane prose starts with the opening sentence: "I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland" (p. 13). His motivation for writing is revealed in the appendix: he hoped this little book may throw "light on the American slave system," and hasten the "glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds" (p. 84). The NLFD was a hit. 4,500 copies sold by the fall 1845. A decade later, Douglass published a second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom which chronicled his years as abolitionist, journalist, and international traveler. His third life story Life and Times of Frederick Douglass chronicled his advocacy of the Union and US Colored Troops during the American Civil War, his years as a federal employee, and continued commitment toward the cause of American social reform. These two successors never achieved the notoriety of the NLFD, although even its allure apparently faded. It was not until the Civil Rights era that NFLD staged a comeback for younger generations, for whom struggles over slavery's past remained germane to contemporary struggles in modern America. In November 1841, nineteen rebels seized the US coastal slaver Creole while en route to New Orleans and gained their freedom in the Bahamas. Earlier that same year, two...